The real purpose of the vote: to get people watching excellent musicians. So if there’s a video you think has been cruelly overlooked, be sure to give it a nomination because I’ll be watching anything I missed first time round.

For the first stage, everyone gets to nominate up to 5 videos – leave them in the comments. From those nominations, I’ll cobble together a list of ten (ish) that will be voted on in the next round. Use whatever criteria you like. I went with whichever videos/songs I enjoyed most.

The Rules

The rules remain as ramshackle as ever:

– There has to be a ukulele in there.
– Videos must have been originally uploaded in 2011.
– Videos must be publicly available online.
– Maximum of five nominations per person.
– Post your nominations in the comments.
– Nominations close midnight Sunday 5th February.
– Ten acts with the most nominations go into the final vote with their most nominated song going forward.
– No prize. Just the love and admiration of the heaving masses.
– No sucking up by voting for me.

Don’t panic if your comments don’t show up right away. First time commenters and comments contains a few links can get held back for spam checking.

Apologies for voting twice, but I’ve just remembered Sophie Madeleine’s “30 Days 30 Covers” project. Unfortunately, my favorite of her videos this year was done with a cavaquinho (http://youtu.be/94Stpju46j8), but there are some winners on uke, too.

I think that the requirement “there has to be a ukulele in there” somewhere doesn’t cut it for me. It’s not really a ukulele video if ukulele is just one of five other instruments in the piece, anymore than it’s really a “tuba video” if a brass quintet is featured. Also, it doesn’t make for a great video if it’s really just a film of some player that you love playing something cool, unless that player is really being visually interesting. He or she better be putting on a show and not just sitting there playing. Ideally a “ukulele video” should really have ukulele at the center musically, and be very visually interesting at the same time. Using that criteria it’s pretty easy to eliminate the vast majority of the suggestions put forth so far. These are the ones I think are keepers:

2)Taimane Gardner – Taimane’s Toccata: eat your heart out Jake, this lady knows how to put on a show, and holy crap can she play. I was mesmerized for the whole 6 minutes.

3)Raymond Penfield – Addicted To Love: Laughed my head off, maybe because I remember the original so well. Tell me you didn’t love this one!

4) Nicholas Abersold – Those Punk Rock Days: So ukulele-centric that there aren’t even any humans in this one, and something just makes me want to keep gazing at that lofty little blue uke.

5) Eddie Vedder – Can’t Keep: Perhaps a little too “real” of a music video, but NO ONE has done more this year to put the ukulele up front and center and drag it’s reputation even further away from Tiny Tim.

-LP, Into the Wild
-Kate and Janelle, Star Witness
-Keston Cobbler’s Club, Pett Level (Love the Cobblers thanks to you!)
-My Brightest Diamond, the Gentlest Gentleman
and last but certainly not least, one of favorite videos ever:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOr8q8Q86RQ
-Kate (from Kate and Janelle) playing So Sorry (originally by Feist)

… I could go with every single suggestion of your Top 5 – just love the music you are listening to! Thank you for this wonderful website!
Okay, so my favourite is “Pett Level” – because I didn’t know it (Thank you!) and stayed with The Keston Cobblers since then.
Christiane.

Ok, I really have been mulling this over for days (to the point where I’m starting to question how I spend my time ;) ), I’ve watched almost all of the videos and my nominations are… oh, I forgot about Molly Lewis!!

1) Eddie Vedder – Can’t Keep
2) My Brightest Diamond – I Have Never Loved Someone
3) Lisa Hannigan – Knots
4) Nicholas Abersold – Those Punk Rock Days
5) LP – Into The Wild – I cannot even see the video where I live but the song is so great the video could be a still frame I’d still nominate it.